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Chapter 28
“Gold.”
“Gold. Give it.”
The whispers of the phantoms reached her.
“You bastards!”
She snapped fully awake because she couldn’t leave it like that.
Gold. They were coveting Krondel’s golden hair. The thought made her blood boil. She remembered the fiends tearing at their comrades’ bodies across the battlefield. Her silver eyes flared with light.
“Get lost!”
She leapt in, swinging her sword with all her might, but there were too many of them. Her magic wouldn’t come out properly, so her firepower was lacking.
“This isn’t nearly enough.”
Her fists clenched on their own.
“…Not enough!”
A gush.
Blood spilled from her mouth, and at the same moment a magic circuit she rarely used suddenly flared wide open.
“……”
This wasn’t the same red magic as before. This time—
‘Looks like I’m about to die. Damn it.’
Still, it would help.
A sharp, powerful magic poured from the silver magic circuit and wrapped around Periot. The force, as overwhelming as the red magic had been, heated the blade. The phantoms sliced by the sword screamed.
—I want to live.
—Mom….
Their screams were chilling and grating, but there was no time to pity them.
She couldn’t bear the thought that Krondel—someone she hadn’t been able to save—was trapped under them. As she swung her sword wildly, the phantoms that had been clinging to Krondel turned to ash and scattered.
Krieeek.
Under the mounds of black shapes, Krondel’s clothes were visible. She braced herself for a horrific sight without meaning to.
cough!
“—Come here!”
The prince was suddenly pulled into her outstretched hand. Silia couldn’t help shouting.
“You miserable bastard!”
“…Are you okay?”
“You almost died! Are you out of your mind, you lunatic!”
Krondel raised his voice instead.
“You’re bleeding from your mouth!”
“This is real!”
As they bickered, something inside Krondel’s clothing glinted. Staring at it, he smiled and pulled it out obediently. It was the tourmaline necklace she had given him. The defensive magic on the necklace had activated, keeping him safe. Silia looked at Krondel.
“You brought it?”
“Just in case. I thought I’d hang back while the magic worked, then follow. You said you’re good at running.”
‘All calculated, huh?’
Her frantic heart calmed. If he’d had that necklace on, it could have absorbed the phantoms’ attacks even if it had wrapped her instead. He could have made up for all the lies he’d told and earned some brownie points.
“……”
Still, it was far too reckless just to earn a little favor. She knew roughly how far that necklace could protect someone. Before she knew it, a sharp rebuke escaped her.
“If you’d really died, what then? You think I would’ve fixed it somehow?”
At that sharp retort, the prince’s voice quieted and slipped into her ear.
“I thought that, but when I found I couldn’t actually help, I hated myself for it.”
The protective magic faded and the necklace’s light slowly dimmed.
“I’m used to dealing with things on my own without a crutch. I know how much I don’t want that.”
He was definitely trying to make a good impression.
…So why did it feel sincere?
“You talk like you know me. You—”
She was about to add another scolding when another scream rang out. Krieeek. Silia grabbed Krondel and ran straight for the exhibit room where Periot had been buzzing. The transparent glass doors swallowed them like a vacuum.
“This place…”
When she looked back, the display stands that should have held treasures were empty. She immediately guessed the spot.
“This is where Periot was, right?”
“Right.”
Krieeek. The phantoms pressed against the doors and screamed. They couldn’t get in, so there must be some kind of ward. Silia muttered, unnerved.
“How many phantoms are there, anyway?”
“I’ve never seen anything like this either. It wasn’t like this when I came alone. The treasury’s in a weird state.”
Krondel frowned, thinking, then spoke.
“It’s probably because of me. More precisely, because of Periot.”
“So they came to take back what was stolen. How did they steal it in the first place?”
“They just took it out. To remove something in the proper way you’d need the king’s signet ring…”
“Of course you didn’t have the king’s ring?”
“I was going to be careful, but stealing the king’s signet ring turned out to be harder than I thought.”
“…Thief.”
She was stunned he’d even considered stealing the ring the king always wore. What nerve.
“So what’s with killing the treasury and all that? That’s why they came in, right?”
“Oh. The phantoms have a leader. If you kill that one, it should work.”
Easier said than done.
Krieeek.
—Gold.
—If you give it, you can live.
As Silia listened to the voices of the phantoms outside, one thing gnawed at her.
“Are those phantoms and their leader really thieves?”
Ordinary treasury phantoms were usually those who snuck in to steal and got caught in traps, or died of starvation because they couldn’t find their way out. They were people who died because their greed caught up with them—no pity to be had.
But these resentful voices—
Krondel looked straight at Silia, his eyes mixing complex emotions. Then, as if deciding, the prince spoke.
“Basically, yes.”
“Basically?”
“The treasury wasn’t built long ago compared to the history of the kingdom. It was built in the tyrant’s reign.”
The tyrant from four generations past was infamous. He set fire to the slums outside the capital and laughed while people fled; he was said to have beaten and killed servants who tried to organize his things. Krondel smiled wryly.
“The tyrant decided to punish intruders who touched his treasures in a cruel way. He used a cursed spell to create phantoms. He wanted the intruders to follow him to the end and die. But to do that…”
Silia answered calmly.
“He needed people to make phantoms out of.”
That was why battlefield necromancers were feared—they constantly had to catch and kill things to make phantoms.
“At that time there was a town whose industry was theft. The whole village was like a thieves’ guild. They sometimes stole with tacit approval.”
“They got permission?”
“They took jobs from nobles—steal something from a noble who was a rival of the client noble.”
“I see.”
“One of those jobs got caught. The noble who was robbed reported them to the king.”
“They gave him an excuse.”
“Yeah. When they went to punish the village, the tyrant found even more valuable things than expected. He thought the villagers must have hidden still more precious items.”
“……”
“He said he would spare them if they brought out the things they’d hidden, especially gold. The thieves handed over all the gold they’d collected, but…”
—If you give it, you can live.
—Gold.
—Mom….
The phantoms’ words started to make sense. They clung to their last desires from life—not just greed for gold, but the desire to live.
“Of course the tyrant didn’t spare a single person. Not only adults involved in theft but the old and the young in the village were used as sacrifices.”
Silia frowned without meaning to. Punishing a village for theft—especially theft tied into noble rivalries—was extreme.
Hearing those voices as the villagers’ own made it harder to cut them down.
“Wait. So when you say ‘kill the treasury’… do you mean kill the curse?”
Silia blurted, and Krondel’s expression brightened slightly.
“Probably.”
“What do you mean ‘probably’?”
“I’m not entirely sure.”
“Hmm.”
It seemed possible. The treasury itself was designed as a curse. Sever the core curse and the phantoms would be freed; the curse on Krondel and on her would lift at once. There’d be no problem getting Periot.
But a treasury without phantoms wouldn’t function as intended anymore. That was why he said “kill” the treasury.
The sticking point was—
“And who takes responsibility afterward? Am I going to be held jointly liable?”
Freeing the phantoms sounded noble. Getting Periot back was good too—though it would be harder than he expected.
But if they got trapped here doing this before catching Ilrod, it would be a disaster. At Silia’s question, Krondel was startled and answered.
“Absolutely not. I’ll take full responsibility.”
“You’re powerless in the royal family? You only go and cause trouble.”
“That’s why it’s fine. I have an image of always causing trouble, so if I mess up here no one will be surprised.”
“Even so, you’d be rendering the royal treasury useless.”
“I’m a prince. They wouldn’t kill me. At worst I’d be exiled.”
“…Let’s break the curse first, then think.”
Silia shook her head and asked, “How do we call the phantom leader? Do we go out and make a scene? Shout for the boss?”
“There’s a much simpler way.”
Krondel turned and started walking ahead. Silia followed silently. They stopped in front of the empty sword display in the center of the exhibit.
“The tyrant thought of something like this.”
Krondel held out his hand to Silia. His eyes were on Periot, so she handed the sword to him without hesitation. Periot lay calmly in Krondel’s hand, as if it knew what would happen.
“He thought that if someone who took a treasure realized they were cursed, they’d want to return it somehow.”
Holding Periot, Krondel approached the display stand and whispered.
“They’d come back on their own two feet, repentant, to put back what they stole. And…”
Click.
Krondel set Periot back in its original place.
“I thought it would be fun from that moment on.”
The exhibit room began to sink suddenly, dropping downwards. A dark, murky purple shimmered outside.
Kugung.
An ominous sound echoed through the exhibit.
